An untamed frontier. Dark cults. Fickle fey gods. Ravenous fiends. Nothing black powder and sorcery won't fix... . Timberlands Campaign Diary
The heroes had dealt with all the zombied dwarves in Longnail village and one of its ghosts. From the wailing in the nearby buildings, however, they knew there had to be more. Bravely, the party cleared out the buildings one by one. They had magic items to find as well to power the fey warmachine, an arbor juggernaut, that waited for them back on a nearby mountain pass (Session 30.)
It didn’t take long for them to encounter other dwarven ghosts as well as the cause. Several of the stout folk had been transformed into grotesque corpse trees with roots replacing their legs and direfly-infested branches sprouting from their ruptured mouths and torsos. Shinashe, the rabbit folk paladin, attempted diplomacy with the next ghost they met. After all, all they wanted to do was to end their torment. Her honorable nature and inner light overcame the apparition’s agony and they were able to lay it and the other ghost they ran across later to rest, without incident.
Their search was not without peril, however. As the last place they checked, a small and sinister abode on the edge of the village, was not what it seemed. The inside walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with a black ichor that undulated and shone like oil. Naylth, the eladrin echo knight, summoned his echo and sent it in… only to have it fall through the floor and discorporate due to being transported to another plane. Something was very amiss indeed.
Gwaedd, the otterfolk bard, tied a rope about Shinashe’s waist after the paladin agreed to go take a look. Freya, the rabbit folk artificer, and Shinashe’s dear friend, helped Gwaedd hold onto the rope while Naylth and Cedwyn, the otterfolk sorceress, kept watch. Shinashe hopped into the room and promptly disappeared.
She found herself floating in a gravity-free space filled with eerie twilight and free-floating blobs of twitching tendrils and abused rock. Here and there, inhuman eyes as big as a horse swam through the dimness. Shinashe felt her sense of reality slipping, this was a Far Realm! She made a quick search, finding a robed dwarf corpse floating nearby, devoid of any moisture with its leathery skin punctured by thousands of sucker-scars. The rabbit folk was about to tug on the rope to be pulled back to the material plane when she saw what was giving off the light.
Towering at thirty-five feet tall, it was a red-skinned hand dotted with mismatched eyes ranging from five to ten feet around. The largest of these organs gazed from the tip of each of its six fingers. Some of the eyes appeared to be from various humanoids, others from a myriad of beasts, and the last from hitherto unknown species. Before the horror's palm sizzled a fiery sigil of a slit-eye surrounded by mind-bending runes. The symbol blinked, moved, and tracked Shinashe as an actual eye would. Lashing, blue tendrils as long as a man dangled from the anathema's wrist, which snatched up the dwarf corpse and pulled it to the entity's hidden mouths beneath.
Shinashe was horrified but tried to make contact with the entity. It replied in a dark, mind-bending language that grated on the rabbit folk’s soul, though she knew not what it was. Shinashe only had a moment as she noticed a ship-length armored ‘fish’ darting toward her out of the gloom. The titanic hand snatched her up before the twilight-swimming thing could swallow her. Instead of stuffing Shinashe into its mouth, the outer being stuffed a waxen-stone into her grabs and pushed her back out into reality. Shinashe landed at her friend’s feet, covered in gunk and shivering.
Shinashe managed to relay what she’d seen to her allies as she was cleaned off but stayed silent as they trudged away from the horrific portal, now inert, and the village as a whole. There was smoke coming from the festival grounds nearby. Perhaps someone there had survived after all?
It turned out that wasn’t quite the case. A house on wheels, complete with a look-out parapet, rested in the middle of the road. Smoke curled from one of its chimneys, while an undead Firewalker harnessed to it rested nearby. Cedwyn and Gwaedd snuck from ruined tent to tent to get closer while Freya stayed back comforting Shinashe and Naylth stood watch.
The majority of the smoke came from a pyre where two men were working. The first was a merchant the heroes had met when passing through the area weeks ago (Sessions 9-10), Landolf Wold. The former knight was back in his armor and wore a grim expression as he pulled bodies to it. Beside him was another armored fellow, a redhead with an aristocratic air who was giving rites to the bodies before they were burned. Another man in dark leathers with a gothic look was tending to the undead crab’s enchantments. The last of this other adventuring party turned out to be Landolf’s lover, the wood elf Toffa Richriver, another merchant the heroes had met previously. The elf had her bow drawn back, the arrow aimed at the crates the two otterfolk hid behind as she warily watched.
Realizing they had been made, Gwaedd called out, and once it was plain no one was going to shoot, he and Cedwyn approached. They were quickly met by the aristocrat who identified himself as Kaspar Wrathyrst, the nephew of the baron of nearby Newpoole and a cleric of the Order of Unquiet Hours. He explained that he and his brother, Simon (the fellow by the crab), had traveled here with Sir Landolf and Lady Toffa of the Order of the Fiery Lion to survey the damage. To the southeast, between this area and Newpoole, the militia of that city and mercenaries were clashing with a waning fey host. Kaspar and his friends had broken through the lines to see what state the Grim-Faced Bridge was in.
Likewise, Landolf and Toffa were anxious to find their dear friend, Ser Silvercrown, the famous paladin guarding the Grim-Faced Bridge. They assumed that if the regional hero had survived, that he’d been a great asset to bring to the fight down south. The pair were crestfallen when Gwaedd explained Ser Silvercrown’s currently cursed state and the carnage he had wrought (Session 31). However, he keenly offered that they sought to free the knight as well and would be glad to team up with Kaspar and his crew. Kaspar readily agreed, as did the two lion knights. Simon, on the other hand, was mostly disinterested in the entire exchange. The entire time he had not so subtly studied Cedwyn. The shadow sorcerer bristled under the attention and sought to avoid it. It wasn’t long before the rest of the party was summoned after Shinashe and Freya retrieved the surviving dwarves Khandra Longnail and Uta Bronzebuckle. After housing the shell-shocked dwarves, the Wrathyrst brothers accompanied the party in searching the fairgrounds for salvageable items.
Kaspar chatted with Freya about the rabbit folk, as he was a bit shocked by their appearance and their risque clothing. Simon tried to pry information out of Cedwyn, but she mostly ignored him. Along the way, the heroes did find a smattering of minor magic items to power the warmachine on the nearby mountain pass as well as discuss their next move. After getting some rest, they’d take the old Empire of Enuk’Lun road deeper into the Pond Peaks. Naylth was sure that it would lead to the ponds that gave the range its name and was home to the Ebon Court fey Lichenclaw, who they suspected maybe behind Ser Silvercrown’s bewitchment.
The most curious thing the heroes ran across was a grey-skinned dwarf corpse sitting in the road. His neck and shoulder were covered in a black spot, while his mouth was distended and chest filled with a direfly hive. However, the hive hadn’t grown much or reanimated the man. When they touched the corpse, it collapsed into dust, leaving the malformed hive full of sickly, dying direflies and the crate it held behind. Freya bottled said hive with hopes that whatever was afoot it would turn out to be an effective poison against the dreaded insects. The crate had a plethora of potions inside and in its false bottom housed three vials full of charcoal-colored granules. Simon, adept in necromantic arts, pegged the substances as ‘essential salts’, the refined down the essence of a person that could be later reconstituted into sapient undead. Each vial was labeled with a dwarven name. Worried, the heroes went to track down where the grey dwarf had come from.
It turned out to be a ruin of a shop called Essential Saltes of all things. The purveyor was aptly named Landrich Grayfinger of Milestone fork. They wondered if he was the ashen corpse they’d found or if the necromancer had escaped? Clearly, he’d advertised in a way to find those in the know. However, it was a problem for another time. The heroes returned to the Wrathyrst’s mobile inn for much-needed baths and rest.
The next day, the party set out for the Pond Peaks. After fording the wide river once more, they found and followed the old Enuk’Lun road. It wasn’t long before they noted the path was shrouded in the crimson mist of Gloom Blooms. Steeling themselves, the heroes forged ahead.
On the first switchback, a pair of Waning Hews charged from the mist. Wearing rictus grins and bearing rusted axes, the dark fey made good use of the fear-enhancing properties of the gloom bloom fog. The pair hacked away at the heroes. Freya’s throwing greatsword got stuck in a tree so she had to rely on her flintlock pistol. Nalyth was overcome with fear, but used his echo to fight on. Cedwyn’s spells proved effective against the waning hewers, as did Shinashe’s glaive and Gwaedd’s mace. While much blood was spilled, the heroes prevailed and hacked their way through the rest of the gloom bloom bank.
More autumn fey awaited them at the next curve up the mountain. This time, a Waning Gore wearing wings of flying charged directly into their backline, skewering Cedwyn and injuring the sorceress gravely. Out of the gloom bloom mist, a Waning Rimer strode, playing dirges on his mandolin; a dirge that assailed the heroes with a torrent of flensing hoarfrost. The rimer cackled as his ally was also frozen but the gore was too stuck in to retaliate.
Gwaedd quickly decided he’d had enough of the rival bard’s shit, and polymorphed into a t-rex. Before he could move on the rimer, however, the devious fey assailed Gwaedd’s new bird-sized brain with endless howls. It drove the t-rex to rage, which also wasn’t good for the waning gore who was shortly eaten. The waning rimer tried to retreat, flinging spells at the heroes the entire way but eventually, he and the gloom blooms around him, were brought down by fire and bullets.
The heroes paused. The waning fey had taken quite a bit out of them, and they still had more to climb.
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